Kenji Nakagami was a Japanese novelist and essayist. He is well known as the first, and so far the only, post-war Japanese writer to identify himself publicly as a Burakumin. His works depict the intense life-experiences of men and women struggling to survive in a Burakumin community in western Japan. His most celebrated novels include “Misaki” (The Cape), winner of the Akutagawa Prize in 1976, and “Karekinada” (The Sea of Withered Trees), winner of both the Mainichi and Geijutsu Literary Prizes in 1977. Nakagami died of kidney cancer at the age of 46.